How to Build Brand Awareness: Definitions, Steps, and Examples

No matter the quality of your products and services, no matter how much you spend on advertising, and no matter how much you post to social media, your business isn’t likely to get very far if it doesn’t have a brand. Your brand packages up your company name, logo, offerings, and content into an experience for your audience and customers. It is the aspect of businesses that consumers come to trust, that places businesses ahead of their competitors.

Yet simply having a brand is not enough. It’s important to be consistently building that brand and strengthening its associations in the minds of your target audience. Brand awareness is an ongoing effort for businesses big and small. Read on to learn more about what brand awareness is, why it’s important, and how you can build the brand awareness for your business.

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is the extent to which a brand is recognized by potential customers and correctly associated with a particular product or service. For example, when someone says “I need a Kleenex,” you know they’re referring to a tissue. There are plenty of other brands that create tissues, but Kleenex has become the most widely known brand. The more familiar people are with something, the more they trust it and gravitate to it.

Brand awareness is important because it helps businesses to stand out above their competition, build an audience more effectively, and generate more leads. A higher level of brand awareness typically equates to higher sales and also serves as an economic moat that prevents competitors from gaining more market share.

Brand Recognition vs Brand Awareness

Brand recognition is the extent to which a consumer can correctly identify your brand based on visual indicators such as logo and colors. For example, if you see the Dunkin Donuts pink and orange letters up ahead, before even making out the words, you’d automatically recognize it as Dunkin Donuts.

Brand awareness takes brand recognition a step further. It involves recalling not only the business name, but also the general feeling of the business, information about its products and services, and other experiential details.

When a business has a level of brand awareness, their marketing and advertising campaigns mean something to their audience. They elicit feelings and emotions in the consumer.

The Importance of Building Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is all about what the mind state your ideal clients enter when they see or hear your company’s name. It helps you to:

Keeping tabs on where your business stands in the eyes of the buying public can go a long way toward becoming the brand of choice. If your business doesn’t have a strong brand identity or brand voice, people won’t think much of your business, as they don’t have much to work with. It is extremely important to identify and strengthen your business brand so that you can harness it for success.

How to Build Brand Awareness

So how do you create brand awareness or recognition in your local market? Sure, you can plaster your business name on every billboard in town, but most business owners don’t have the budget for high priced advertising. Plus, increased exposure doesn’t necessarily equate to increased brand awareness. For some more meaningful and effective ways of building brand awareness, you may want to:

To effectively execute on your strategy, be sure to identify ways of measuring your brand awareness so that you can make necessary adjustments and improvements along the way.

Examples of Brand Awareness

In addition to the Kleenex and Dunkin Donuts examples above, here are some more companies that have a high level of brand awareness.

Coca Cola

Johnson & Johnson

Visa

Nike

Google

Most people can identify these brand and feel their unique atmospheres from merely catching a quick glance at their logo or a snippet of their jingle.

Using eye catching visuals, investing in advertising in the right places, and developing a distinct voice in your content, you too can build brand awareness for your company. The key is to be consistent so that you can strengthen your image in the eyes of your audience with every encounter.